Self Promotion

Challenge: 

The impact of being featured by some form of the creative press cannot be underestimated.

Press opportunities are in three sectors:

• Print (Ion Design, Printed Pages)
• Online (It's nice that, Intern, Creative Review)
• Social (Instagram)

The challenges is to get some sort of press coverage this academic year

Case study - 

Michael William Lester - Character Building 

Jihee Lee - Should I leave or should I stay

Use research to aesthetically and conceptually guide what you decide to make

Challenge Response:

Although I was unable to get featured online in a publication that is relevant to the design industry, I was able to get featured on a daily slot in a design social media website (The Dots).

About The Dots

We are a network of Makers, Doers, Fixers and Dreamers — collectively creating a better future.Born out of a genuine passion to make the creative industries more open and diverse, founder Pip Jamieson launched the platform in 2014.
Looking to the future, with the rising march of automation — creativity is our secret weapon. Soon machines will drive, serve customers, code, clean, manufacture, do our accounts and legal work. What are humans still good for? Creativity! So if we want our children and grandchildren to have jobs and make our economies thrive, we need to support the Makers, Doers, Fixers and Dreamers that bring creative ideas to life.That is what The Dots is all about; connecting, supporting and championing the people, teams and companies that make ideas happen.

I joined the dots as a social network in order to apply to some of the roles which I was interested in, the best way to be able to make yourself stand out on the network is to upload your projects with a short statement that could be linked to certain elements of your branding elsewhere, such as your website, in a similar way that LinkedIn works but through a only creative base. 

The Dots 'Featured Page'

In their network each day they publish a selection of projects from part of the network and feature it. My work from second-year 'Adidas Motion' was selected, from having the project featured on the page it gained my profile a lot more views, as well as certification from 'the dots' for being featured. 

How to get a placement

How to get a placement

Find new approaches don't just be emailing:

• Phone calls
• Sent items in

Jobs you can do as a graphic design graduate:

1. Graphic Designer 
2. Freelance Designer
3. Junior Designer in a studio
4. In house designer
5. Junior Designer in an ad agency
6. Freelance in agencies
7. Creative Director
8. Own studio creative director
9. Marketing
10. Consultancy
11. Teacher
12. Lecturer
13. Social Media
14. Studio founder 
15. App design
16. UX/UI Design
17. Product designer
18. Typographer
19. Blogging/Social Media
20. Set design
21. Content Strategist
22. Art Director
23. Advertising creative 
24. Packaging Design
25. Pre Press Technician
26. Front-end web design
27. Motion design
28. Exhibition design - OK-RM
29. Interior design
30. Printmaker/Print service
31. Account director
32. Brand Strategist
33.  Media planner/buyer
34. Image retoucher

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator - Campaigner

Reaching out:

• call them
• to invite them to an event/exhibition
• use language like I can and I will
• short sharp compelling

This is intern

Origin of Intern:

• Worked with a blog called KLLKT, that was set up by friends, inspired intern by talking and putting out other creatives work; whilst Alec studied an MA in sociology.
• Worked as an intern at Domus, getting into magazine publishing. The magazine was all about architecture. 
• Editor of Domus asked Alec to move to Milan and work towards Milan Architecture design week. 
• Wrote a review on an installation in Washington, the highlight of the time at Domus.

Making Intern:

Why intern - no one was talking about interns in a way that was approachable.

Started - printing with the newspaper club, 5 copies printed, gave the publication the opportunity to establish a visual identity for the magazine.

Kickstarter video - led to donations for about 7000, exchanged donations for advertising space within the magazine.

Pitching and Networking

Talk about your work effectively:

• Communication is an essential part of the skills set.
• Confidence and clarity.
• Need to be your own PR team, unfortunately, we don't work in a community where the best work becomes the most visible all of the time. 
• People need to see as a designer you are a good communicator. 

A breakdown into three parts that will help us to talk to people about what we're doing:

• pitching 
• networking 
• submissions

Pitching:

Elevator pitch - rough concept in the time that someone is in an elevator with you, tell them everything they need to know in a clear and concise way.

Task:

Choose a favourite project that you're going to feature on your website, and pitch it in a sentence (stat with three and edit it down), what how and why.

- What is the core idea?

- How does it work?

- Why does it work?

Balance cosmetics:

What is the core idea?

The idea was to create a branding identity for a cosmetic brand which removes the element of gender-focused design within particular products that are associated with one gender.

How does it work?

My design response works in a way that removes gender-focused visual relations from the equation keeping the design based on simplicity and branding the design using transparency as a tool for removing any particular gender-focused design features in the core identity itself.

Why does it work?

The project works as it gives a modern fresh take on a product that is traditionally more swayed to a female market and making it relate to a younger new minded generation, who are becoming more accustomed to using said products. The outcome removes traditionalism and replaces it with a focus on the products use, rather than societies determined marketing direction of it.

Elevator pitch of balance cosmetics - 

(make from highlights)

Simon Sinek - Brands: Ted talk

• Brands can tell you what they do 
• Dell can say they make computers
• Apple come along and disrupt the market
• Apple approach making their products with why they make it, where the purpose and of creating the product comes from.
• 'We believe that design can make the world a better place', gives the reason why before the what and how.
• Doing the process the other way round allows people to buy into the brand that has a purpose, meaning they can do whatever they like because people have already bought into the brand ideals before even seeing the product.

Find peoples email:

https://hunter.io/ - crawls the web to look for linked emails with a particular URL, once you have the structure of the emails where the person works and their name you can make a structure where you can email them.

Visioning - 5 Years Time

In this weeks PPP sessions, we decided to create a dream plan of 5 years time, without taking any limitations into consideration. 

Planning My Vision

1. Set your vision five or ten years in the future 
2. Start off by writing the date, as if it is a the date you are living in, i.e. 2023 
3. Write in the present tense as if the vision is happening
4. Describe your ideal life, and be as detailed as you want
5. Include professional and personal life
6. Cover everything that defines success for you? this could be where you live, what car you drive, what quality of life you have, it can be as personal as you want. 

9/11/18

In 5 years’ time. 

It is September 2023, I am living in London, in a small, yet comfortable apartment with my partner, who is getting a promotion in his broadcast journalism career; with our speckled Daushound, Nigel. We have a kitchen with an island, and a wine fridge, with a constant rotation of wines returning with us from holiday visits to various vineyards.

I did my 9-5 stint as a junior designer at Conde Nast, which has allowed me to gain some strong contacts in the industry. My dedication and distinctive visual voice meant they decided to send me on my MA in design communication; whilst allowing me the time to get more into my freelance work. I have been working in my new role as senior designer, only part-time (Monday – Wednesday), as the rest of the week is spent working in my own studio space; building up my own practice. I will be working alongside fashion brands, being bought in to push their visual communication beyond their boundaries, Peter Saville, look out. From my senior designer role, I will be earning around 40k a year, which will be topped up by my various side projects, within the branding and communication area of branding. For ‘actual’ work I need to travel to Paris and New York regularly, let me also build up a larger client base for my own practice. 

I am be saving regularly to aim towards being able to put down a deposit on a property in commuting distance from London, to fit in with both mine and my partners’ careers. Yet we do use these savings to travel, visiting Asia, locations such as Japan, China and Vietnam.

I have managed to control my diabetes and my health is on top form, as my new-found progression in my career, has allowed time to actually join a gym – and employ a PT so I can begin to ‘enjoy’ exercise. Yet I still drive to the gym.